Catching up with Method and Process Practice: An Industry-Informed Baseline for Researchers

Software development methods are usually not applied by the book.companies are under pressure to continuously deploy software products that meet market needs and stakeholders\u27 requests. To implement efficient and effective development processes, companies utilize multiple frameworks, methods and practices, and combine these into hybrid methods. A common combination contains a rich management framework to organize and steer projects complemented with a number of smaller practices providing the development teams with tools to complete their tasks. In this paper, based on 732 data points collected through an international survey, we study the software development process use in practice. Our results show that 76.8% of the companies implement hybrid methods.company size as well as the strategy in devising and evolving hybrid methods affect the suitability of the chosen process to reach company or project goals. Our findings show that companies that combine planned improvement programs with process evolution can increase their process\u27 suitability by up to 5%

Review of practice-led research in art, design & architecture

This review report sets out the outcomes of a 10 month investigation to describe the landscape of practice-led research in Art, Design and Architecture (ADA) in the UK and beyond. We were asked for a qualitative review but of course it has been important to gather some numbers to check and illustrate our observations. We have consulted widely, both face to face and in the virtual world, with experts and novices in the UK and around the world. We have tried to strike a balance between the natural desire of our colleagues to debate the more contentious aspects of this territory (they were never going to forgo that opportunity) and the equally strong wish of the AHRC that we should provide a clear description of what is happening. We have collected some diverse examples of research and subjected them to various examinations. We have also examined a selection of research projects funded by AHRC and other projects by creative practitioners, funded by a non-research organisation. From all this we have been able to describe the landscape in a straightforward sense: We have measures of the proportions of ADA academics involved in practice-led research. We have clarified differences in the ways that the different ADA disciplines engage with practice-led research and identified some problems that indicate possible future support strategies. We have discussed some problems with general definitions of research and identified issues that should be addressed to ensure that the AHRC definition can be applied to the full range of practice-led research. We have picked out some specific case examples that illustrate the range of contexts, methods and contributions made by practice-led researchers, and more are described in detail in Appendix F. We have also sought to assess how this research relates to the wider international picture in which the UK appears to have a strong position in both volume and development of research. We have also set out some issues that affect this community of researchers: What strengths and weaknesses have we observed and where is there a need to support development? Do the AHRC definition of research and guidance on practice-led research provide an effective framework? We have illustrated the state of development of research in ADA, and some reasons why it is less robust than might be expected from such long established disciplines. We recommend that the career path of researchers in ADA needs some attention and make some suggestions about how that could be achieved. We have also indicated some areas of inquiry that might be supported to advance the theory and methods of practice-led research. In particular we have come to the conclusion that conventional ideas of contribution to knowledge or understanding may not be serving us well. This is significant to fine artists but we believe that it relevant across ADA and a shared effort to develop appropriate new models would be a constructive development. The full set of recommendations can be found in chapter 5

Patterns of User Involvement in Experiment-Driven Software Development

Background: Experiments are often used as a means to continuously validate user needs and to aid in making software development decisions. Involving users in the development of software products benefits both the users and companies. How software companies efficiently involve users in both general development and in experiments remains unclear; however, it is especially important to determine the perceptions and attitudes held by practitioners in different roles in these companies. Objective: We seek to: 1) explore how software companies involve users in software development and experimentation; 2) understand how developer, manager and UX designer roles perceive and involve users in experimentation; and 3) uncover systematic patterns in practitioners’ views on user involvement in experimentation. The study aims to reveal behaviors and perceptions that could support or undermine experiment-driven development, point out what skills could enhance experiment-driven development, and raise awareness of such issues for companies that wish to adopt experiment-driven development. Methods: We conducted a survey within four Nordic software companies, inviting practitioners in three major roles: developers, managers, and UX designers. We asked the respondents to indicate how they involve users in their job function, as well as their perspectives regarding software experiments and ethics. Results and Conclusion: We identified six patterns describing experimentation and user involvement. For instance, managers were associated with a cautious user notification policy, that is, to always let users know of an experiment they are subject to, and they also believe that users have to be convinced before taking part in experiments. We discovered that, due to lack of clear processes for involving users and the lack of a common understanding of ethics in experimentation, practitioners tend to rationalize their perceptions based on their own experiences. Our patterns were based on empirical evidence and they can be evaluated in different populations and contexts.Peer reviewe

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

Building Stronger Bridges: Strategies for Improving Communication and Collaboration Between Industry and Academia in Software Engineering

Background: The software engineering community has expressed growing concern regarding the need for more connections between research and practice. Despite the large amount of knowledge researchers generate, its impact on real-world practice is uncertain. Meanwhile, practitioners in industry often struggle to access and utilize relevant research outcomes that could inform and enhance their work. Collaboration between industry and academia is seen as a potential solution to bridge this gap, ensuring that research remains relevant and applicable in real-world contexts.Objective: This research aims to explore challenges in communication and collaboration between industry and to design, evaluate, and implement strategies that foster this collaboration. Methodology: The design science paradigm inspires this research, as we aim to obtain knowledge about industry-academia communication and collaboration by studying challenges and solutions in context. The thesis includes case studies; some are exploratory, while others focus on evaluating specific strategies.Results: In terms of problem understanding, we identified challenges that impact communication and collaboration, such as different expectations, perspectives, and ways of working. Furthermore, we pinpointed factors facilitating communication, including long-term projects, research relevance, and practitioners' involvement.Regarding how to improve communication and collaboration, we investigated two strategies. The first strategy involves using the SERP-taxonomy approach in a project on software vulnerability management in IoT systems. The second strategy involves the proposal of interactive rapid reviews, conducted in close collaboration with practitioners. We share the lessons from conducting two reviews (one in testing machine learning systems and the other in software component selection). The benefits of conducting interactive rapid reviews include mutual understanding, the development of networks, and increased motivation for further studies.Conclusion: The thesis emphasizes the importance of industry-academia collaboration as a key aspect in closing gaps between research and practice. The strategies discussed provide tools to understand industry-academia partnerships better and support future collaborations

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

7th International Conference on Ethics Education: Conference Proceedings

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio